I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Art is the proper task of life.

I wear the national dress because it is the most natural and the most becoming for an Indian.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.

Be proud to be Latino and never lose that pride!

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold country that we love. That’s what I see. That’s the America I know!

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other ‚studies‘ was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these ‚studies‘ are about propaganda rather than serious education.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don’t have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

Not one person can make or break what I’m doing, except me or God.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

Everyone has their style and your style explains a lot about who you are – you feel me? I’ve had style since childhood, so I like to dress how I feel. But maybe I get carried away by some trends.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.